


Strange Attractor

by Dryad



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Family, Gen, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 09:25:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5962285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dryad/pseuds/Dryad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chaos out of order begets...what, exactly?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strange Attractor

**Author's Note:**

> With the new series on, I've come to realize that I haven't yet posted everything on AO3. Ah well, better late than never, right?
> 
> Oh, this was originally formatted for [Ephemeral](http://ephemeralfic.org/), so if anything looks weird, let's just say I always had problems posting there, mmkay?

 

He stepped forward and offered his hand. "Fox Mulder."

The man met Mulder's gaze only for the briefest of moments before looking away. "Charlie Scully."

The handshake was weak and desultory, and though Mulder knew it wasn't fair of him to do so, he couldn't help but judge Scully's youngest  
brother on the strength, or lack thereof, of his grip.

"Dana's not here at the moment, but she should be on her way," he said, retreating towards his desk. "Would you like some coffee or a soda?"

Charlie put his hands in his pockets and drifted to the white filing cabinets furthest away from Mulder. "No thanks."

Mulder nodded slowly. He decided against sitting down, preferring instead to rest against the front edge of his desk. Folding his arms, he said, "Are you in town for long?"

"No, just visiting," Charlie answered, fingering a photo of his sister receiving a certificate from a forensic botany course she'd attended in  
Champaign-Urbana.

"Dana and your mother must be ecstatic to have you here."

Charlie shrugged and glanced at Mulder's knees. "I guess."

Which was not the reply Mulder had expected. Yet, the more he thought about how rarely Scully mentioned her younger brother's name, the more he wondered why. It wasn't as though she brought her family up in daily conversation, but sometimes long plane rides and car trips had a way of turning on her vocal fountain.

Besides, while he'd never thought he'd meet Charlie, he'd always imagined someone who looked similar to Bill and Missy - tall, with a medium to large build and sand-to-copper hair. Short, pinch-featured, and dark-haired hadn't made it into the running. Charlie also had a very slight frame, but without the wiry musculature common to the thin male. And from what Mulder could recall, he had the most extraordinarily pale gray eyes. In short, he looked nothing like a Scully. In fact, if he didn't know better, he would have said that Charlie was unrelated to the Scully family.

Or a half-sibling.

But that was impossible.

He was pondering the safest subject to bring up (no asking what he did for a living, or where he worked, or why the hell Scully never mentioned his name) when he partner swept into the office.

Noting her expression, equal parts fear, frustration, and eagerness, Mulder got up and sat in his chair.

Scully barely looked in his direction, striding towards her brother with only a minimal hesitation, arms open and commanding a hug. "Hey."

Mulder was relieved to see Charlie smile as brother and sister embraced.

"'Hey' yourself," Charlie said.

"I hope you didn't have to wait too long," said Scully.

"No, I just got here."

"Have you eaten lunch?"

Mulder took his cue and started shuffling through the file he had just  
started to read when Charlie arrived. "Why don't you take the afternoon  
off, Scully."

She nodded, and without further ado, left, with Charlie in tow.

Curiosity was ever his failing, but Mulder managed not to phone Scully over the weekend. Instead, he kept himself busy with a thorough cleanout of boxed magazine clippings, a trip to two of his favorite used bookstores, a long lunch at Dickerson's reading An Exchange Of Hostages, which Frohike thought had a few ideas stolen from Those Bastards At Langley, and a long workout at the gym.

So come Monday morning, he was quite surprised to find Scully already in the office, tapping away at his computer. He hung up his coat and flopped down in front of the desk. "I thought you might have taken today off, too, seeing that Charlie was here. How did your weekend go?"

She gave a most un-Scully-like funny little head bobble, as if she didn't quite know what words to use. "It was...different. I'd forgotten..."

After a minute Mulder gently prompted, "Forgotten what?"

Shaking her head, Scully slumped against the back of the chair and sighed. "I don't know."

He had to remind himself that patience really was a virtue, especially since it seemed that he would actually find out what he wanted to know if he could only keep his trap shut. "Is he really all that dissimilar from when you were kids?"

"No," she snorted. "That's just it, he's not different at all. I know I've changed, Mulder, but I've always thought that a sibling could and should recognize their own sibling."

"I don't understand," he said. "You find yourself disturbed by the very thing you expected?"

"Did I ever tell you what happened what happened when we moved to San Diego? I must have been, oh, fourteen or fifteen maybe a little older. It's funny, but when you're a military kid, one of the constants you hang onto is that of your faith. No matter that the priest or the church or the congregation is new, the words and the rituals are the same."

"Charlie was a normal kid, the typical younger brother, annoying me and Missy and following Bill like the sun shone out of his ass."

Startled, Mulder was unable to supress his chuckle. He waved one hand at her, "Sorry. The image took me by surprise."

She smirked back at him. "But appropriate, no? In any case, like the rest of us, Charlie glommed onto Father Brown almost before we were unpacked."

"Scully," he tentatively began, hoping this story wasn't heading where it seemed.

"No. No. Father Brown wasn't like that. Charlie changed, though, over the next few months. He became strange, Mulder, secretive, almost violent."

"Sounds like a typical teen to me."

"My parents had a hard time with him. And you're right, every doctor they brought him to said the same thing - typical teen, he'll grow out of it, call us if he becomes a danger to himself."

"Could he have been schizophrenic? It's not completely unheard of forsomeone younger than eighteen to have a diagnosed psychosis," Mulder mused.

She shook her head again. "That occurred to me during med school, butthe people I spoke to thought it unlikely. I'm not necessarily convinced they're right, however. Eventually he dropped out of high school and started working for a local mechanic. My mother was devastated, but Ahab said that there was nothing wrong earning a decent wage and supporting a family."

Mulder thought Ahab probably had had a lot more to say on the subject when in the privacy of their bedroom. 

"Anyway, one day Charlie didn't show up for work. We got a postcard from Arizona weeks later, and I didn't see him again until Bill's wedding, not even for Dad's funeral, and now, here he is this weekend."

"You said he wasn't any different?"

"Well, he hid it well in front of Mom, but no, I don't think he was. If anything, he's more secretive than ever. Oh, he told us he works in a coffee-shop in Phoenix, as a short-order cook, but he didn't look at us when he said it."

"The important thing is that he came here of his own accord, right?" he said softly, leaning forward. "No doubt things are awkward, you have to get used to one another again, and maybe that means accepting whatever of himself he can give. This isn't anything you don't already know."

Scully acknowledged his gesture with a slight smile. "It's hard."

He wanted to tell her not to make his mistake, not to thrust away the chance of the merest scraps of contact if those were all that were offered. He knew her, though. She would do all she could and more before she gave up. "You'll do fine."

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the [X Files Lyric Wheel](http://www.hegalplace.com/xflyricwheel/) in December, 2006.
> 
>  
> 
> I am not a scientist. Oh, I know it's an odd tale, but  
> one that's been on my mind for quite a long time, and this was the best  
> way I could deal with it.
> 
> Strange attractor, excerpted from: http://www.calresco.org/attract.htm
> 
> 'A useful insight into the possibilities here can be gained by  
> considering the concept of basins of attraction. Let us start by  
> thinking of a bowl containing a ball bearing. This will move around the  
> bowl until eventually it comes to rest at the lowest point. We can say  
> that it is 'attracted' to that point, so each part of the bowl can be  
> regarded as leading to that stationary point, and the whole bowl is what we  
> call the basin of attraction of that system. If we place the ball bearing  
> outside the bowl then it will have a tendency to go somewhere else, so we  
> can see that an attractor is only effective within a certain area of space,  
> and we can have many different attractors adjoining each other. 
> 
> For any dynamic (time changing) system the attractor is where it will  
> end up eventually. Now this need not be a fixed equilibrium point like  
> we saw above, we can have attractors that follow an orbit (like that of  
> the planets round the sun) or we may have a system that never return  
> to the same place - this we call a 'Strange Attractor'.'
> 
> It's all Greek to me!


End file.
